Nestlé is trialling an AI solution that promises to redistribute the equivalent of up to 1.5 million surplus meals in edible food waste to UK charities.
The manufacturer is part of a pilot involving Nestlé UK&I, Zest (formerly The Wonki Collective), Bristol Superlight, FareShare, FuturePlus, Google Cloud and Howard Tenens Logistics – brought together by Sustainable Ventures – which applies Zest’s AI to its York confectionery manufacturing facility’s operations.
The AI would “pull together loads of different datasets” said Zest co-founder Dini McGrath, both historic and real time, to create “a very intricate picture of what is going to be happening now in the production line and in the future to then enable them to make process changes to reduce food waste”.
Nestlé will then use Zest redistribution algorithms to redistribute any unavoidable, safe-to-eat surplus to FareShare partner charities – with up to 700 tonnes of surplus food expected to reach them by the end of the project in March.
Zest has been working with FareShare – “a huge beast with a lot of mouths to feed” McGrath said – to “digitise their demand”.
“The whole idea is if our technology can view where surplus is and where it is needed, our algorithms can then connect the two and make sure food can stay in the food system – it doesn’t go to waste and it gets used at its highest nutritional value: back to humans,” McGrath told The Grocer.
Nestlé’s surplus will chiefly be distributed to FareShare catering charities, with demand predicted based on historic menus, the number of people they need to cater for, and location.
“From all of that data we’ve collected, we can start getting an understanding of their order patterns and what they’re going to need for the next week,” McGrath said.
Nestlé has long been working to reduce waste in its production. Another project with Zest reduced edible food waste by 87% at a single factory over a two-week period via several initiatives, for example turning Kit Kats that didn’t pass quality control into the praline in the middle of other bars.
“This AI magic really helps to look at where those points [of waste creation] might be happening more ahead of time,” said Dr Emma Keller, head of sustainability Nestlé UK & Ireland. “It might be able to understand if machinery that shuts down for maintenance, what waste might be incurred, and how it can be better managed and redistributed – rather than at the end of the day or the end of the shift the team seeing what’s left of that having to be dealt with.
“As the world’s largest food manufacturer, it is important for us at Nestlé to set an example on food waste,” she added. “This exciting cross-industry initiative builds on work we have undertaken over the last decade to tackle food waste and will enable us to further optimise surplus within our operations. With the country suffering from historically high food poverty and food insecurity rates while food waste continues to rise, focusing on this is the right thing for us as a business to do.”
Surplus food matching
The integrated AI powered platform leverages Google Cloud’s BigQuery and Vertex AI platform to streamline and accelerate the process of matching available surplus food, including products and ingredients, to charity demand. Bristol Superlight’s integrated machine learning-driven logistics system enables the quality of surplus food to be measured and tracked throughout its delivery journey.
Once tested, the solution could be applied at scale across the food supply chain, Sustainable Ventures said, and offers commercial and charitable opportunities for the entire sector.
“We believe in the power of collaboration. Bringing together this fantastic group of stakeholders will reduce the time and risk taken to develop this new AI food supply chain management platform, whilst providing a market ready solution that can be rolled out across the industry,” said Andrew Wordsworth, co-founder and managing partner of Sustainable Ventures. “We are here to bring together corporates with climate tech startups, finding ways to derisk the process and enable sustainable, innovative and commercial solutions to enter the market. This project is only the beginning; watch this space.”
Innovate UK’s BridgeAI initiative has provided a £1.9m grant that has been match-funded by the consortium.
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